ZITKALA A (1876-1938)

Portrait photograph of Zitkala a, attributed to Gertrude Kasebier

Zitkala a, a Yankton Sioux, was among the
first Native American authors to tell her own
story without the aid of an editor or translator,
and she was a significant figure in pan-Indian
politics during the first part of the twentieth
century. She was born Gertrude Simmons on
February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Reservation
in South Dakota. As a little girl, at the enticement
of missionaries, she left her mother and
homeland to attend boarding school. In compelling
narratives published in the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine in the early
1900s, Gertrude described her life on the reservation
and her experiences in White's Manual
Labor Institute boarding school in Indiana and
as a teacher at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
She also published short stories and a
collection of traditional Sioux tales, Old Indian Legends (1901). Gertrude renamed her literary
and public persona Zitkala a, or Red Bird.

In 1901 Gertrude returned to the Yankton
Reservation, where she met and married Raymond
Bonnin. They worked for the Indian
Bureau on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation
in Utah, where Gertrude collaborated with
William Hanson on the Sun Dance Opera
(1913) and became involved with the Pan-
Indian Society of American Indians. After she
was elected secretary in 1916, she and Raymond
moved to Washington dc, where she
worked for the society and edited and wrote
for American Indian Magazine.

In 1921 she published her earlier writings
along with several new, more political pieces
in American Indian Stories. With Raymond,
she continued her activism, lobbying for the
American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924,
against violence and injustice on reservations,
and for land claims and tribal rights. Zitkala
a died on January 26, 1938, in Washington
DC. She was buried in Arlington National
Cemetery.

Denis R. Fournier
University of Mary

Rappaport, Doreen. The Flight of Red Bird: The Life of
Zitkala-a. New York: Dial Books, 1997.